A Journey through Dutch and German (and Hebrew?)

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aokoye
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Re: A Journey through Dutch and German (and Hebrew?)

Postby aokoye » Mon Apr 30, 2018 6:34 pm

So far so good with the Dutch course. I need to submit the two speaking/writing activities by Wednesday (or really, Tuesday night) but one of them is already written. I have done all of the exercises in the 9th chapter which is the one that we're working on this week. I've also learned all of the words. I think I am going to slowly start adding words for the next chapter so I have a slow trickle of new words going into Learn with Oliver instead of hitting myself with 50-80 words all at once.

I also read through a few chapters of Kontrastsprache Niederländisch last night after I got all of my most pressing homework done. I definitely think that is going to be a "read this but don't do any of the exercises" thing. I'm also reading it for content more than I am for learning words. I think reading it more intensively would just overwhelm me and would totally override the "trickle of words new words". I watched an episode of Andere Tijden Sport last night/this morning as well. I fell asleep watching it and finished it up this morning. It was interesting - sad but interesting. I ended up putting (Dutch) subtitles on and was able to understand the gist of what was going on which is all that matters at this point. I mean I also knew part of the back story (the bit about the Georgian luge athlete at the Vancouver Winter Olympics which was only part of this documentary - but really, don't watch it if you don't want to see footage of that as the accident gets shown a few times), but I hadn't read or heard any of the information about the Dutch 2 and 4 man bobsled team which was the bulk of the story.

Right now I'm in a cafe doing some exercises from Routledge's Basic Dutch Grammar Workbook. I ended up making a new section of one of my notebooks for grammar reference and and doing all of my exercises for this and every other language related thing in another notebook. I can move pages around in the notebook with grammar reference stuff and it's also where all of my research for my research project, grad school stuff, and scholarship/grant stuff goes. I may end up getting a separate notebook just for language stuff but we'll see Right now I'm working on present perfect, which is the grammar theme for the 9th chapter of Nederlands in Gang. After I finish that I am probably going to put some words into Learn with Oliver, study those for a bit, and then head home.
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Elsa Maria
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Re: A Journey through Dutch and German (and Hebrew?)

Postby Elsa Maria » Fri May 04, 2018 1:30 pm

Hi, I wanted to let you know that I am following your log, and that I appreciate the reviews of the University of Groningen MOOC. I have signed up for the free course with the next start date (August 13), and I am looking forward to it!
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aokoye
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Re: A Journey through Dutch and German (and Hebrew?)

Postby aokoye » Mon May 07, 2018 3:39 am

Elsa Maria wrote:Hi, I wanted to let you know that I am following your log, and that I appreciate the reviews of the University of Groningen MOOC. I have signed up for the free course with the next start date (August 13), and I am looking forward to it!

I'm glad it was helpful! It was a nice little course and covers a surprising amount of content given that it's free.
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aokoye
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Re: A Journey through Dutch and German (and Hebrew?)

Postby aokoye » Mon May 14, 2018 9:33 pm

I had my first Dutch Skype session for the Dutch course and, as I told one of my friends afterwords, I didn't sink but I did doggy paddle. It actually went really well, especially given that I had never spoken to anyone in Dutch before. It looks like every few weeks there will be Skype sessions. They had us fill out a doodle poll with what time works best for everyone. The person I got paired with was really nice and we had a half an hour talk with one of the teachers. It was similar to the speaking sessions I had when I was taking Spanish at Sarah Lawrence, but a bit shorter.

All told I think I did well. I stumbled over some things and I unconsciously defaulted to German when I couldn't figure things out which I had expected would happen. In an amusing (but also unsurprising) coincidence, the teacher that is going to be working with us over Skype knows one of my professors in Portland! I say unsurprising because said professor holds a small professorship at the University of Groningen and used to live there before moving back to the states.

Also as expected, I had a much easier time understanding what people were saying than I did speaking. That said, the grammar has been, so far, fairly easy for me which I think helps my speaking not be a total mess. There's only been one thing that threw me for a loop (when to use bedoelen vs beteken) but once I asked about it and got it explained it made sense.

Outside of the course work for my class I've also be doing Duolingo which has only been somewhat useful for vocabulary. I can't say that I'm surprised - I more or less went in knowing that would be the case. I hate the new redesign but I keep coming back :|

My goal for the rest of the week is learn the words from chapter 11, do the speaking and writing exercises for my course, and try to do a little Duoling each day.

German is pretty stagnant. I haven't worked on it purposefully because I just haven't had the energy. I still go to stammtisch faithfully and the research that I'm doing for my research project involves a lot of German, but I haven't done a lot of "ok I'm going to sit down and work on German now." That said, I might have gotten a lead for a fellowship like opportunity at my university for next school year that could involve me spending some time in Germany via the college of business. I don't know that it would touch at the bounds of my language abilities, but I'm hoping to hear more about it later this week.
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LadyGrey1986
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Re: A Journey through Dutch and German (and Hebrew?)

Postby LadyGrey1986 » Sun May 20, 2018 9:51 pm

Hallo Akoye. Ik heb hier al een tijdje niets meer gepost, maar ik heb ook in Leiden en Groningen gestudeerd.
Als je vragen hebt, kun je me altijd een DM sturen!
Succes met Nederlands leren.

As for English on Dutch universities, I just going to leave this article here:

https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2018/05/m ... h-courses/
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aokoye
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Re: A Journey through Dutch and German (and Hebrew?)

Postby aokoye » Mon May 21, 2018 6:29 am

Dankjewel voor de artikel! Ik heb het heel interessant gevonden. Ik ben niet verrast, want er zijn zo veel programma’s in engels. Ik denk dat ik ook enkele jaren geleden over iets soortgelijk heb gehoord. Wat heb je in Leiden en Groningen gestudeerd?
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aokoye
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Re: A Journey through Dutch and German (and Hebrew?)

Postby aokoye » Mon May 28, 2018 7:20 am

All the languages: So it turns out I have full access to a number of ebooks from Routledge through my university's library. This includes Colloquial Dutch, Intensive Dutch Course, Intermediate Dutch Reading, Dutch an Essential Grammar, and their Introductory Course in Biblical Hebrew.

Dutch: Dutch is going well given how busy I am. This week we're doing chapters 12 and 13. I have finished all of the vocab and exercises from chapter 12 and am about half way through the vocab for 13. I also am have been talking to one of the people in my course on Skype every week which has been fun. We also had a writing assignment last week that I got really good feedback on. I"m really enjoying Dutch because it just makes so much sense to me. Yea my pronunciation is kind of a mess still but that will come - I've only spoken to people in Dutch a few times so I have tons of room to grow.

This week we have a spoken assignment due which I need to finish by Wednesday. It's about how often we visit friends "in our country" and what we do during our visits. I'm amused because the example that we were was essentially, "i visit my friends who live in the same city that I do once or twice a week and my friends who live in other cities every month or two". Meanwhile for me it's more of a, "I see my friends who live in other states once or twice a year, at the most."

Duolingo is annoying me in that I really don't like the crown system at all, not at all. I put up with it, but I don't know that it is actually of much use to me in its current iteration.

Everything else:
I'm not putting any real effort into German and I'm ok with that at the moment. I just don't have the time. I might have time once I graduate in August (yay!) but until then I just don't have the time. I'm more or less in minimal maintenance mode. I go to Stammtisch twice a month which I love and I watch some shows in German. I read articles every so often, but honestly I don't have time to read much of anything outside of stuff for school.
I'm slightly more invested in putting more effort into Biblical Hebrew than I am in German, but only slightly. Really I think I might just shuttle it to the Fall or perhaps maybe this summer.
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Tristano
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Re: A Journey through Dutch and German (and Hebrew?)

Postby Tristano » Tue May 29, 2018 9:11 am

hey wat fijn dat je ook Nederlands leert.
Ik heb andersom gedaan: eerst Nederlands, dan Duits (aber mein Deutsch ist noch sehr schlecht). Ik vind dat als je een van de twee talen goed kent en dan probeer je de ander te leren, gaat het heel snel. De enige twee problemen dat ik met Nederlands had, zijn:
1. vocabulaire. Het was mijn eerste echt Germanische taal. Engels is een beetje half en half, het hielp me niet zo veel met het Nederlands.
2. volgorde. Ik maak af en toe nog steeds fouten, maar het is wel te doen.

Voor de rest is het niet zo spannend hoor. Je moet veel vaste combinaties leren, net zoals de andere vreemde talen.
Succes ermee en geniet van je leerproces!
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aokoye
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Re: A Journey through Dutch and German (and Hebrew?)

Postby aokoye » Fri Jun 01, 2018 10:30 pm

I am sleepy but I have half an hourish of time to kill and my brain is a bit too bogged down for more Dutch at the moment. It's more that I'm tired and sitting in the office that I share. It's a nice office and I'm lucky to share it as an undergraduate student, but there's no natural light.

Dutch is going ok but I'm seriously looking forward to this summer when I'll be able to focus more on things I really want to do. Dutch is one of those things. We are on week 5 and are working on chapter 14 and 15. This is the second week in a row that we've done two chapters per week and I am not a fan given that I have a bunch of other school work to do. It's really an issue of making sure I learn all of the vocabulary. The grammar is very easy for me, thankfully. I think that I'm also a bit frustrated that I don't have anyone to speak Dutch with/that it isn't part of my everyday environment. With German this isn't an issue. Partially because I've taken so many in person classes but also because I go to a German speaking group twice a month. Having lived in German speaking countries is also a plus.

Today I worked on more words from chapter 14 and finished all of the exercises from the previous chapter. I also just got finished reading this article about about using hydrogen as an energy source. I understood the vast majority of it. There were a few words that I had to look up, but otherwise it was just inference and/or really knowing the words.

Goals/things that are going on this week for Dutch:
Learn the vocab from chapters 14 and 15
I have a Skype session for my class
Finish the written assignment for my class, which is about vacations (sadly I'm not planning on taking a vacation this summer...)
Finish the textbook exercises for both chapters
Take the test for that is due Wednesday if I'm not mistaken

So yea - that's a lot especially given that school is also a lot. I suspect I'll do the written assignment this weekend and try to bang out most of the vocabulary by Sunday and all of the exercises for chapter 14 by Sunday.
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aokoye
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Re: A Journey through Dutch and German (and Hebrew?)

Postby aokoye » Wed Jun 06, 2018 7:16 pm

Second Dutch Skype session - done!

It was absolutely exhausting. I think if there wasn't this rather unfortunate affective filter thing going on I would feel less stressed. Also I think not being immersed in Dutch is really not helping matters and while German is obviously very helpful, it's also what I default to in situations where I need to speak a language that isn't English. Even if the other language isn't a Germanic language. I'm also just really stressed with school stuff and haven't had as much time to spend on Dutch as I'd like.

Let me note, given that this was the third time I've ever spoken Dutch with anyone, I did a very good job. I got full marks and was told that my Dutch was good for someone who a. doesn't speak with people on a regular basis and b. has never lived in the Netherlands. That said, it's exhausting. I also got an 89% on the test that I needed to take by today and uploaded the short writing assignment as well. Thankfully we are back to our one chapter a week schedule from the looks of things. I can catch up on the last half of chapter 15th's vocabulary and start on the vocabulary in chapter 16 by the Friday.

Goals for now through next Wednesday:
Textbook stuff
Vocabulary stuff
Read at least one article
Find ways to practice listening and speaking
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